Byzantine cuisine
Byzantine trading with foreigners brought in grains, sugar, livestock, fruits, vegetables, and spices that would otherwise be limited to specific geographical climates.
The Imperial Palace was a metropolis of spices and exotic recipes; guests were entertained with fruits, honey-cakes and syrupy sweetmeats.
Thanks to the location of Constantinople between popular trade routes, Byzantine cuisine was augmented by cultural influences from several locales—such as Lombard Italy, the Sassanid Empire, and an emerging Muslim caliphate.
They prepared eggs to make famous omelettes — called sphoungata, i.e. "spongy" — mentioned by Theodore Prodromos.
The Florentine chronicler Giovanni de Pigli reported variously prepared types of chicken, pigeons, salad, and eggs being served to the Emperor John VIII Palaiologos during his visit to Florence in 1439.
[3]: 159 Byzantine citizens obtained other kinds of meat by hunting animals like deer and wild boar, a favourite and distinguished occupation of men.
Citizens slaughtered pigs at the beginning of winter and provided their families with sausages, salt pork, and lard for the year.
Liutprand of Cremona, the ambassador to Constantinople from Otto I, described being served food covered in an "exceedingly bad fish liquor,"[4] a reference to garos.
[3]: 161 Rye, millet, oats, and vetch were primarily cultivated as animal fodder and were not preferred for human consumption.
[3]: 162 It was used to make gruel and porridge such as trachanas (τραχανάς), and Symeon Seth also mentions poor people eating millet mixed with milk.
[3]: 167 If the typikon of the monastery of St. John the Baptist is anything to go by, a typical Byzantine citizen might eat about two and a half pounds of meat in a single day.
[3]: 167 Diverse animal bones found at Corinth, dated to sometimes after the mid-1200s, indicate that a wide range of meats was eaten during the Late Byzantine period.
[3]: 167 The hagiography of Symeon the Holy Fool also mentions bacon and a type of fried sausage eaten with mustard.
[3]: 168 Beef, on the other hand, was less commonly eaten than either pork, sheep, or goat because cattle were mostly used for working in the fields instead.
[3]: 169 Poorer urban households also ate tarichos (τάριχος) – salted, pickled fish sold by grocers instead of fishmongers.
[3]: 172 Many scholars state that Byzantine koptoplakous (Medieval Greek: κοπτοπλακοῦς) and plakountas tetyromenous are the ancestors of modern baklava and tiropita (börek) respectively.
The most famous example is the still extant Commandaria wine from Cyprus served at the wedding of King Richard the Lionheart.
Retsina, wine flavored with pine resin, was also drunk, as it still is in Greece today, producing similar reactions from unfamiliar visitors, "To add to our calamity the Greek wine, on account of being mixed with pitch, resin, and plaster was to us undrinkable," complained Liutprand of Cremona, who was the ambassador sent to Constantinople in 968 by the German Holy Roman Emperor Otto I.
[4] Archaeological studies in central Anatolia indicate that the average Byzantine peasant household was more or less self-sufficient in food supplies, and their diet would have been relatively well-balanced.
[3]: 173 Vitamins and minerals, derived from seasonal and pickled vegetables, fruits, and nuts, were lower but still "minimally sufficient".
[12] While Byzantine pottery found at excavations in Boeotia was decorated with innovative techniques and designs that combined elements from local culture and Islamic art, the shape and function of tablewares remained simple - jugs were uncommon, and the wide, shallow bowls and dishes were too porous to use as drinking vessels or for watery soups or stews.
[14][15] By the 13th-century, the previous style of dishes was replaced by bowls that were deeper and narrower, suitable as vessels for liquids, stews or beverages.
The Last Supper fresco at the Dochiariou monastery of Mount Athos from the 14th-century depicts food served in multiple bowls, with wine jugs, and beakers, individual bread rolls, and shared dishes and knives.
[3]: 158 Some, such as John L. Teall, Alexander Kazhdan, and Giles Constable, suggested that "the average Byzantine was undernourished, consuming only bread, vegetables, and wine, but rarely meat or fish".
[3]: 158 Grains, pulses, fresh fruits and vegetables, dairy products, fish and meat, wine, olive oil, and honey were all part of the typical Byzantine diet according to her.
